It is well known that the complete failure of steel cord-reinforced conveyor belts as used on conveyor belt structures in various mining and industrial applications can have catastrophic results. As such, condition monitoring of these conveyor belts has become common practice, the objective being to identify damage to conveyor belts and thus to effectively maintain conveyor belts, thereby to ensure that the possibility of complete failure is substantially reduced.
A typical steel cord-reinforced conveyor belt as herein envisaged is made up of elongated conveyor belt sections, typically in the order of 300 m in length. Each section comprises a central layer of multi-stranded steel cords sandwiched in a substantially equally-spaced, parallel configuration between two rubber layers, the sections being connected by means of splices. A splice between two sections is formed by overlapping the ends of the two sections by from one five meters and vulcanizing the sections together. When the sections are so connected, the cords of the sections in the overlapping region are arranged in a pattern in which alternating cords of the sections lie in a parallel adjacent relationship.
A damaged conveyor belt region may constitute a region where one or more individual strand of a cord of a conveyor belt, or a complete cord, is broken, frayed, corroded, or otherwise damaged. It is known to monitor a conveyor belt for such damage by magnetizing the cords of the conveyor belt and sensing for a magnetic field adjacent the conveyor belt, a magnetic field so sensed being indicative of cord damage. Known apparatus for the purpose include coil-type magnetic sensors, one particular known arrangement having four such sensors spaced across the width of the conveyor belt monitored, so that each sensor serves to identify cord damage in a transverse quarter segment of the conveyor belt. Although sufficient to indicate cord damage, the exact location of a damaged cord within a quadrant of the belt width still remains difficult to establish. Also, because a coil-type magnetic sensor in fact senses the rate of change of magnetic field strength within the region where a cord is damaged, it has been found that although a damaged region is adequately indicated, the nature of the damage and the deterioration rate of a damaged cord cannot be established or monitored and, as such, it still remains difficult to establish exactly when conveyor belt maintenance should be optimally performed.
Other condition monitoring apparatus for steel cord-reinforced conveyor belts that utilize generally the above principles also are known, but these are associated with the same inadequacies and it is thus an object of this invention to provide a method of and an apparatus for the above purpose and in respect of which the above inadequacies are at least ameliorated.